Author: Cynthia Low

Why I Love Being the Vendor

Written by Cynthia Low on March 31, 2008. Posted in Articles.

There are two sides to the business analysis community: The internal business analyst and the external consulting companies or contractors … “Vendors”. Being the internal BA just isn’t much fun sometimes and often, the internal policies and practices can work against your success. Sometimes it’s the company itself that has created a requirements analysis gap and the individuals – however strong they might be – just can’t be successful. Entrenched, hierarchical, corporate cultures will always work against the internal BA unless a company has made the leap to reset the value and position of BAs within this hierarchy. In spite of all these challenges, I’ve also seen internal organizations transform themselves from being order-takers, to being considered highly valued business drivers. So often the difference in mindset for those that succeed is they’ve started to think like vendors.

As a vendor, I get to dictate the process or our company does not do the engagement. This is a strong position – we’ll only do engagements we know will be successful, or we (subtly) take a pass on working together. Vendors work from a position of strength and build up our “referenceability.” If I can say “we’ve done over 1,000 of these” and give specific examples, people generally listen when you tell them “this is the way it gets done if you want success.” Sure, the vendor has to tune the process around the edges to improve the fit with existing internal processes and issues, but the essence of how the work will get done stays the same on every engagement. By negotiating the process of requirements discovery up-front, by identifying precisely where additional costs might exist, or how to tune their process to meet their specific business objectives, a vendor walks into an engagement with a higher level of commitment to the process than you would see on most internal projects. A good vendor pre-loads the deck for success by setting out process, roles, and the minimum involvement needed from stakeholders before they take the engagement. A vendor’s project intake process is far more structured – even where we’re outsourcing and doing 20 large projects for the same client in a quarter. A vendor can’t deviate from working this front-end because we know that eventually, if we don’t scrutinize it closely, we’re risking failure on an engagement.

Vendors have done their homework on the value they bring. We also dedicate about 25% of our corporate resources to ensuring that people understand our value in communications and direct sales cost. Since a decent vendor has done the research, they can prove to management what will happen in time and cost if their process is not followed. For example, I can show someone hard data from live projects on the reductions in requirements change we bring, the timetable improvements we achieve, and how our process brings value to larger, more strategic projects. Because a successful vendor has thought long and hard about what it does, they can be more concise and quantified about the value we intend to bring to a specific situation. We also separate organizational value management (sales role) from value delivery (consulting function) to more deliberately manage client expectations and satisfaction. For the vendor, high satisfaction is only achieved by a specific path, that starts with setting the right expectations on the value we bring, and ends with help people both see and showcase that they were successful in achieving their objectives. The thinking is different: Internal analysts tend to focus on task achievement; good vendors think about value management.

A successful vendor’s delivery team has conviction. Conviction is that deep-seated belief that a process is going to be successful IF an engagement is conducted a certain way. You can have business analyst training until you are blue in the face, but unless there is the absolute belief that the new techniques will be successful, these techniques will not used. Vendors make people document the success stories and show these to the new consultants. At our organization, we make sure that people know that the process has worked over 1,000 times successfully, and we take the cost hit to put our new people on airplanes to observe an engagement done by an experienced team, so that they can success for themselves. We also get them to co-pilot an engagement with a successful user of the methods before we ever let them go solo. All this effort is part of building both competence and conviction. At the end of the day, a vendor can only be successful if every person on the delivery team is able to do the methodology in EXACTLY the same way and get a consistent result. In our world, there really isn’t a second chance – we do exceptionally well, or we get fired. Analysts follow the process a vendor dictates not simply because they understand it, but because they absolutely believe that they will be more successful if they follow it. The path to developing skills is fairly straightforward. The path to getting consistent execution is much more complex and relies on first building conviction.

I like to relate success and momentum in general within organizations to a big, heavy, flywheel. A big success gets the flywheel turning a little. Get a bunch of successes… and the wheel turns a little faster. The flywheel is an analogy for a cycle of positive change where small, incremental steps lead to momentous change. If I go back 10 years, our company tended to do smaller engagements of one or two weeks and we really did not pursue large-scale engagements. Today, it’s the inverse – our teams tend to be engaged on extremely large and complex projects, and the smaller one- or two- week engagements are a smaller proportion of our revenue. Vendors must deliberately manage momentum. With positive momentum, the strategic focus of the organization shifts over time. An organization with no positive momentum offers basically the same value to the organization year-after-year. A vendor can’t simply say “our strategy this year is to do more BA stuff”. In the vendor world, clients can be a bit ruthless, so vendors must either show momentum and continuously strengthen the value proposition, or wane in importance as service providers.

A vendor as specialized as we are (we only do business requirements) lives or dies by how we scope and size an opportunity, and how we determine the optimal process, plan and strategy to recommend for a requirements engagement. We simply cannot miss when doing estimation – ever. In fact, in the last bunch of years, I can’t remember sliding over-budget on an assignment. We have to closely manage the number of client days used on an assignment and commit in a statement of work that we are going to produce “X” deliverable in “Y” days. Most analyst organizations really do not manage client expectations on the number of days required to do requirements. In fact, a mere 25% of organizations we recently surveyed accurately estimated the amount of time needed from the stakeholders. The rest underestimated by an average of 192% (get the results from http://www.iag.biz/). How do you expect to maintain stakeholder involvement over time if the team consistently overruns expectations by almost 200%?

Finally, vendors get access to all the neat toys. It is perhaps one of the bi-products of working with so many clients that you see what is working and what’s not, but more importantly, a vendor has a deliberate R&D focus to continuously look at new methods or technologies and see what makes them tick. It’s neat to get a freebie copy of the latest and greatest from a tools vendor like RavenFlow and fiddle with it on an engagement. Having a substantial R&D budget for BA best practices and technologies development means the vendor is able to get ahead of changes in client demands and talk to them about how, for example, agile methods can be made to work well on very large scale engagements. Having an R&D sandbox in which to play with new technologies and methods may be fun, but candidly, it’s the only way to determine the practical application of these technologies and methods, and help the organization develop the value it brings to clients. In fact, internal business analysts and vendor organizations both have access to the toys, the question is, is there a managed process to turn that access into value?

Are these lessons from the vendors well implemented in internal business analyst organizations? Take a little test:

Do your BAs take enough time negotiating the process of requirements discovery – especially on strategic projects – to ensure success?
How good is your organization at selling your process internally? Do you measure or manage the value delivered to the organization?
Do you have consistently high quality requirements from all BAs? Do your people have conviction that they’ll be successful if they follow your internal process?
Do you have strong momentum? Consistently enhancing value brought to the organization – and an expanding budget/mandate?
Can you accurately forecast (+/-10%) the number of days needed for conducting business analysis and in creating business requirements?
Do you have a practical, managed process for BA process and technology R&D?

If any of the answers are “No”, ask yourself, “why not.” Why not force your BAs to do better elicitation planning, or publish your success stories, or benchmark your team against best of breed performance to showcase their strength? Maybe you already have strong momentum. But, maybe, you’re looking for ways to build that momentum and acting more like an external vendor is the path to help get you there.

Keith Ellis is the Vice President, Marketing at IAG Consulting (http://www.iag.biz/) where he leads the marketing and strategic alliances efforts of this global leader in business requirements discovery and management. Keith is a veteran of the technology services business and founder of the business analysis company Digital Mosaic which was sold to IAG in 2007. Keith’s former lives have included leading the consulting and services research efforts of the technology trend watcher International Data Corporation in Canada, and the market strategy of the global outsourcer CGI in the financial services sector. Keith is the author of IAG’s Business Analysis Benchmark – the definitive source of data on the impact of business requirements on technology projects.

An Eye for Value: What the Business Analyst Brings to the Agile Team

Written by Cynthia Low on March 31, 2008. Posted in Articles.

There’s no question about it: agile project management expedites the new product development process. It is a streamlined methodology, based on having only essential people work in tight knit teams for quick and efficient results. Of course, one very important member of the team is the business analyst. Why? Because if companies hope to achieve strategic goals, they need someone who is focused on the business value expected from the project outcomes to help provide guidance, not only during a project, but also before it is invested and after it is delivered.

In traditional project management, which comes from the construction industry, a great deal of up front planning and requirement generation is done. People can then walk away with finished plans in hand to construct a building. Though it is a logical approach for construction, project management has been adapted over time into an agile system for business projects that contain a significant technology component. For such tasks, it is difficult to articulate requirements for a future way of working that has not yet been tested. Agile projects proceed on more of a ‘learn as you go’ premise where small working teams include customers and developers who are co-located and spending 100 percent of their time dedicated to the project. The work is done in increments, and quick iterations are continually evaluated and modified. A project manager and a business analyst each play a crucial role on such a high performance team.

A project manager is essential for overseeing a product development project and making sure it comes in on time, on cost and with full scope. The business analyst is key in managing the evolving business requirements and the business benefits. According to the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), the official definition of a business analyst is a person who works as, “a liaison among stakeholders, in order to elicit, analyze, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies and information systems. The business analyst understands business problems and opportunities in the context of the requirements and recommends solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals.” With the advent of agile product development and the constant requirements evaluation and modification within a project’s lifecycle, the business analyst is more valuable now than ever before.

The business analyst involvement in agile projects, unlike that of the project manager, is not limited to the period of time when the projects are active. Business analysts provide continuity for companies, from cradle to grave, by working with portfolio management teams to make sure the most valuable projects are being invested in, providing oversight during projects, and finally measuring actual benefits after projects are completed.

Chart a Course with Portfolio Management

Portfolio management is a relatively new practice, which is coming into its own as organizations better understand the importance of how choosing the right projects to invest in helps them to achieve their goals. When involved in the early planning stages, business analysts serve a company by providing enterprise analysis. By evaluating the competition and conducting benchmark and feasibility studies, business analysts identify business opportunities and create a list of potential projects to support.

Next, the business analyst puts together a business case in which they analyze the best approach to a particular project and show quantifiable benefits. After all potential solutions are studied and analyzed individually they create concise project investment decision packages for the optimum solutions to present to portfolio management steering groups or governance committees.

Created with the right expertise and tools, these project investment design packages provide the information for proposed projects in a consistent way. Such a presentation allows the executive level decision makers to compare apples to apples, the expected value, cost and risk of one proposed project versus that of others. The decision-making boards can then wisely select and prioritize major project investments.

Stay the Course During Product Development

Once a project is approved and funded, a project manager is assigned to technically manage it. Ideally, a business analyst will continue to oversee and elaborate the business requirements and benefits they originally helped to define. The two professionals have different but complementary roles in the product development process. Through team leadership and collaboration, they successfully guide an agile project that is both efficiently and effectively run, and that has significant long-term benefits for the company.

A business analyst’s main priority, when first attached to a specific project, is to elicit business requirements and categorize them into valuable features or functions. Then each feature is described in enough detail to determine its cost versus its benefits. By knowing what it will take to deliver each individual component of the project, as well as what the return will be to the organization, the development team can then build components or features based on value, and deliver the highest value features first.

As an agile project progresses through its lifecycle of requirements, design, construction, testing and deployment, the team continually learns new information. It becomes clearer how many resources will be needed to perform detailed design, construction and tests, how much risk there is to the project and how the risk needs to be managed. Accordingly, it is important to go back and check original assumptions concerning costs to develop and operate the new solution and business value to see if they are still true.

Working with the project manager and the core team of developers and customers, the business analyst updates the business case at key milestones throughout the project and adds more detail to the project plan. For example, the business analyst may discover that a project is going to take 12 months instead of six, and will cost 10 million dollars instead of eight. The portfolio management team needs to be informed, so that they can decide if the project is still a good investment and if it should continue. The business analyst will make valuable recommendations, such as continuation with some sort of course correction, like a scaling down of the requirements.

Because agile projects often involve upgrading information systems, it can be easy for the technical developers to focus on what technology can do, rather than on how technology can best serve the specific goals of the company. Throughout the constant adjustments in the development process, the business analyst always keeps the focus on the business requirements, the costs and risks involved and what value the project will ultimately return to the organization.

The role of liaison between developers (engineers who may not understand the intricacies of the business process) and customers (business people who may not know what exactly to request technologically) is an important one. Alice Zavala, Senior Consultant for Management Concepts in Euless, Texas, gives the following example: An agile team was working to create a new company website, and the customer asked for a drop down menu with both credit card and check payment options. The developer has the know-how to create what is asked for, which is basic information on an aesthetically pleasing background, but there are business rules that need to be applied to the process that were being overlooked. In this case, the business analyst bridged the gap between what the customer requested and what the developer needed to provide, by proposing a back screen to perform an approval process before the credit card or check goes through. According to Zavala, such a situation requires oversight because, “in order for information to be put on the screen, we needed to know what other business processes are going to be touched.”

By being involved during the development process, business analysts validate that new components are actually meeting business needs. They also take information to other groups outside of the agile team, to further corroborate that the changes have the support of other stakeholders, who will also benefit from revised requirements or at least not have conflicting requirements that need to be addressed.

The Finish Line and Beyond

In conjunction with the cost of the development of a new business solution, the operational component needs to be analyzed and assessed before the project is implemented. With a major new business system, perhaps there will be a need for some reorganization, retooling, retraining, or acquisition of new staff. Working with management, the business analyst helps to insure the organization is prepared for the impact of the changes. That way, when the final system is ready, it can be operated optimally.

Once the new system is in place, the actual costs of development / acquisition and operation should be compared to its actual benefits to the company. If a business analyst has been involved from the beginning of the process, he or she will have created a business case containing projected quantifiable benefits, which can be measured against the end results. This final analysis shows the organization whether they have received their predicted return on investment. If the performance metrics show that the project was a success, great. If not, the business analyst can investigate to find out where the project went wrong. Was it a bad investment because it was too high risk? Was the project executed poorly, so that the project cost a lot more than expected? Was the organization not prepared for the new system, so that operating costs are much higher than predicted? This type of post-project evaluation is crucial to improving future projects because it allows a company to learn from its mistakes.

Team Players

With all of the opportunities enabled by new technology, businesses are establishing strategic goals to keep up with the times and stay ahead of the competition. To both set and achieve their goals, they rely increasingly on the skills of business analysts, who can not only assist in making projects successful, but help select and prioritize those projects with the most business value, and analyze the effectiveness and worth of a deployed system.

The project manager and the business analyst are both integral in creating a high performance agile team. While the project manager’s role is more technical (keeping the project running smoothly) the business analyst’s role is more strategic (provided the team with a road map). Without a business analyst on board, with an eye on strategic company goals, an agile team can be like a high performance car without a navigator – making good time, but not sure where it is headed.

This article first appeared in PM World Today eJournal. www.pmworldtoday.net

Kathleen Hass, PMP , is the Project Management and Business Analysis Practice Leader for Management Concepts, Inc. and has more than 25 years of experience in project management, including project office creation and management, business process re-engineering, organizational development, software development, technology deployment, project management training, mentoring and team building. For more than a quarter of a century, Management Concepts, Inc. has provided quality training and performance improvement solutions for the mind at work. For further information, please call 703.790.9595 or visit the company website at http://www.managementconcepts.com/.

Alignment, Requirements, CBAP and MORE!!

Written by Cynthia Low on March 14, 2008. Posted in Articles.

Great line-up of articles and blogs for this issue! From proper language of alignment to CBAP Soup to Nuts and everything in between, including a Letter from the IIBA President in the IIBA Insight section. I know that you’ll really enjoy this issue’s content.

I want to personally thank not only YOU, our subscriber, but all of our content contributors. We truly appreciate your insight, thoughts and overall contribution. Now – I’ve got one request to YOU – let’s here your feedback.

We have had a few suggestions to our new suggestion box, which we have quickly acted upon. Please utilize this new opportunity for you to offer ways to improve the site, suggest content, or offer new discussions forums you think we should add. We can not continue to improve without hearing from you so keep the suggestions flying!

Stay tuned for our 1 year anniversary celebration! Happy reading!

Best Regards,

Adam R. Kahn

Never Let a Good Editor Go

Written by Cynthia Low on March 14, 2008. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Never Let a Good Editor Go

When documenting systems, quality assurance requires quality support people, especially final content editors. They are worth their weight in gold-edged certificates. If you are part of a large project that has a very large documentation aspect, learn to nurture, develop, and retain a good editorial staff, and do not forget to keep everyone’s skills current on the tools you are using! The current crop of word processor and presentation software packages are constantly adding features to make your life easier.

In our ever more technical world, documentation is still one of the most important aspects. Everyone likes to “feel the weight” of what they accomplished, and documentation is commonly a major part of closure in a project.

The Second Eye
If you have ever had to write a program or a document that was 2000 pages or longer, you will probably get to the point of forgetting what you wrote days, weeks, or months ago. I know I do. That is where a good editor can save the day. Make it a habit of passing along the content in reasonably sized pieces to another soul who dutifully reads every line, checks every drawing for accuracy, and checks syntax and examples. This is a truly wonderful thing.

A second set of eyes will see things that you cannot. Spelling, grammar, syntax, run on sentences, redundancy, too much or too little detail, irrelevant details, your own quirky tidbits that might not be as clear to them as to you, the list is endless … and the work is absolutely crucial!

Praise Your Editor
Thank them for finding those errors that you were unable to see after looking at the same page for hours. Most modern word processors can handle spelling errors but not if they are technical jargon or corporate jargon.

I like to break my content into smaller, specific pieces if possible, but this does depend on the client requirements. If the programs are small, then the sections can be small and succinct. In some cases, the sections require previous sections to be completed and functioning. Only someone who was totally familiar with the whole picture, the end product, and the inter-relationships of the pieces can provide you with a good set of eyes to review your content with.

Send them praises: Excellent work finding “the the”, “good idea to add that as well”, “you are once again correct, that part is unnecessary”. “good eye, I forgot that topic entirely”…

Editing is an Art
Being an editor requires a great depth and breadth of knowledge on the subject. I would not pass this document on to my teenage daughter; it would be gibberish. She once asked me to “fix” her paragraphs about the Crusades. I expounded on them and thought I was keeping it simple. Alas, I was way too technical. I added about 10 extra words for every two of hers. Then there are many times when I edit her words to be, shall we say, more accurate.

On some recent technical documents, I was doing the developing and passing it on to three evil editors. The first two were masochistic, butchering the youngling without regard for effect, it seemed. They passed it to the third editor, a very technical person, who must have thought I was completely incompetent when he got the butchered remains of my work. It was an interesting few months of trying to figure out their system. And, interestingly enough, that last technical editor was actually very competent. He never missed a detail, was very thorough and fortunately knew his stuff. The other two butchers were trying to fit the content into a web page design rather than have the web page provide the content.

Editing Adds Time
It is highly likely that your editor is not doing this full time for you. Hence, you need to allow for their scheduling requirements within your schedule. Having lots of lag time is always nice. Giving them clearly stated times and dates for delivery of their edits are other important aspects. Everything takes time, and time gets consumed faster the closer the project deadline is.

When I line up an editor, I make it clear there is some flexibility in their timelines at the beginning especially and I try to ensure that deadlines do not force me, or them, to cut corners. Deadlines really are annoying at times! I also make it very clear what the deadlines are and how they can help me meet them, along with general ideas of what I want them to look for, and how they should send change requests or make adjustments.

Give Them Source or Don’t Give Them Source?
This can be a tricky issue. Should you give your editor the source and let them make changes directly to the document? Yes and no.

If you can have tracking of changes, this is always an excellent idea. What if they change your source document without tracking the changes? If you are working with a competent editor to whom you have given this option and in whose inputs you trust, then this is one way to get it done faster. You should, of course, edit their changes for them!

In some cases, as the editor, you may not get the source code, or as the owner of the document, you may not want to give them the source. In some of my recent projects, I would get a PDF of the document. This was fine for simple grammar and syntax errors but became onerous when major changes were required. I was forced to send in “sticky notes” of changes. This is probably the least efficient method for the editor, but it does maintain total control by the owner of the document. There are probably a lot of good and bad reasons for using this method, I just cannot think of any good ones.

Being an editor is important and can be rewarding. Having a bad system for rendering changes will ruin the relationship. A good project management truism is to retain your best support people, and especially a good editor. They make your project that much easier to complete on time.

David Egan, RHCE, PMP,

is an instructor with Global Knowledge Training LLC. This article was originally published in Global Knowledge’s Management in Motion e-newsletter, named Business Brief. Global Knowledge (www.globalknowledge.com) delivers comprehensive hands-on project management, business analysis, ITIL, and professional skills training. Visit our online Knowledge Center for free white papers, webinars, and more.

CBAP Certification: From What is It? to I Did It!

Written by Cynthia Low on March 14, 2008. Posted in Articles.

The business analyst (BA) role has become essential in today’s workplace as a vital component of a successful project. The business analysis field has been accelerating at a rapid pace, and this acceleration has caused some understandable growing pains. Among the challenges are a lack of standardization, inconsistent terminology across organizations, and difficulty in assessing knowledge and skills of BAs.

The International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA) was founded as a non-profit organization to promote the growth and professionalism of business analysis. Part of IIBA’s mission is to document and maintain standards for business analysis, and to recognize and certify practitioners. The CBAP (Certified Business Analysis Professional) certification program was put in place in 2006 to screen, test, and certify qualified and knowledgeable BAs.

This article briefly summarizes the CBAP program, and why business analysts should become certified. The majority of the article covers the steps and several tips to help you become certified.

IIBA and Certification

The IIBA was formed in 2003 as a non-profit organization devoted to creating awareness and recognition of the importance of business analysis. Part of IIBA’s vision is to build its image and become identified as the professional organization for BA professionals. It is also focused on identifying BA skills and competencies, and certifying practitioners based on them.

In fact, the IIBA’s mission is to “Develop and maintain standards for the practice of business analysis and for the certification of its practitioners.” One of the main creations of the IIBA has been its Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (called the BABOK for short or sometimes just the BOK). The BABOK is a guide to the generally accepted knowledge and practices in the BA profession. The other significant creation has been the CBAP certification: Certified Business Analysis Professional. The authors are proud to be among the world’s first CBAPs.

The CBAP certification process came from a BA task analysis study done back in 2006. From that, a committee of experts developed examination questions to test the business analysis knowledge and its application by BAs. Along with a rigorous application process, the examination is used for assessing and certifying experienced and knowledgeable BA practitioners.

In the spirit of the CBAP exam, and to start preparing to pass it, we’ve assembled a few basic multiple choice questions. These questions are typical of those on the exam—they are not from the exam. The answers are revealed at the end of the article.

Here’s the first of the questions; go ahead and see how you do!

1) The BABOK defines Business Analysis as:
A) Analyzing business problems and determining which projects will best solve those problems.
B) Identifying business needs and determining solutions to business problems.
C) Verifying business requirements by ensuring the solution meets business needs.

Certification Requirements: How do You Stack up?

Five years (7,500 hours) of business analysis work in the last 10 years

Demonstrated experience and knowledge in 4 out of 6 BABOK™ Knowledge Areas

21 hours BA professional development in last 4 years

Minimum high school education

Two work references

Application Process

The IIBA made the CBAP application process a rigorous one, to screen out under-qualified and less-experienced BAs. Check out the basic qualifications in the sidebar to the right. IIBA’s website has a comprehensive Frequently Asked Questions document about the CBAP process. Visit www.TheIIBA.org for more information.

Tip: The CBAP application can be tedious to complete. Use the thetemplate that IIBA provides to document your work experience and project hours.

To take the CBAP exam, your application must be pre-approved. The professional development hours must also be complete before applying. This requirement has prevented more than a few otherwise-qualified applicants from being allowed to sit for the exam. Make sure you can document your education hours with a certificate or other written proof.

Benefits of CBAP Certification

Given the strict requirements and rigorous application process, one would assume the certification is worthwhile, right? Well, as a matter of fact it is. There are a number of benefits that IIBA has identified to organizations to certify their BAs through the CBAP designation:

Employee development and recognition is enhanced.
CBAPs have signed a Code of Conduct, which increases the professionalism of its adherents.
CBAPs are identified as individuals with an advanced level of knowledge and qualifications, and follow established standards, making them a good choice for critical projects
CBAPs produce reliable, quality results with increased efficiency and consistency
Employers have a reduced risk in hiring and promoting people with the CBAP credential.

IIBA has also identified several benefits for you to become CBAP certified:

Demonstrates dedication and commitment to the business analysis profession
Ability to enhance the profession and have a voice among other professionals
Expedited professional advancement because the CBAP sets individuals apart
Demonstrates knowledge and skills necessary to be an effective business analyst
Advanced career potential – without having to become a Project Manager!
Opportunity to earn more income
Be recognized by the organization and peers as experts in their field.

The CBAP Exam

Hopefully, you can see there are many benefits for you or others at your organization from BA certification. To help you get started, here is some valuable information about the exam and tips for passing it.

As of the date of this article, the CBAP exam is a collection of 150 multiple-choice questions. Some are simple and straightforward, some are downright difficult, and most are challenging. The exam will be“going electronic in mid-2008, but for now it is paper-and-pencil based. It is also held in a few select cities. The IIBA web site contains current and future exam dates.

The exam duration is three hours, and you may find that you need most or all of that time. Because of the length, some people find it useful to start the exam by noting a few key mnemonics and definitions. If nothing else, this “brain dump” helps alleviate a little test anxiety that many people feel in a high-stakes exam like the CBAP. We’ve recommended this same technique for years to people preparing for the PMP exam.

Tip: do a “brain dump” of key concepts at the start of the exam to help clear your brain, reduce test anxiety, and to serve as a reference as you take the exam.

OK, ready for another exam question?

2) The BABOK defines a Business Analyst as someone who:
A) Translates business needs into a design that can be implemented by the development team.
B) Responds to client requests and provides solutions that best meet those needs within time and cost restraints
C) Elicits, analyzes, communicates, and validates requirements for changes to business processes, policies, and information systems.

BABOK Overview

The CBAP exam is heavily based on the BABOK guide. There are some exam questions not strictly found in it, but thoroughly knowing the information in the guide is the surest way to pass the exam. The BOK has over 300 pages of often-detailed tasks, inputs, outputs, and techniques. It is helpful to have a plan and tools for breaking the BABOK down into logical pieces for memorization and study.

To start you off breaking down the BABOK, here are highlights of it and some key areas to study.

Tip: Start by memorizing all the Knowledge Areas (KAs for short). Then work on memorizing tasks with each KA. Some have too many, so start with KAs having only a few, like Enterprise Analysis and Elicitation, and work up from there.

Enterprise Analysis

This KA focuses on identifying business opportunities through feasibility studies, creating business cases, cost/benefit analysis, etc. It covers looking at the big picture through building a Business Architecture framework, in order to later integrate requirements into it. Plus, it can provide a context or foundation for evaluating future projects, issues, and changes. There are only six tasks in this KA, so you are advised to memorize them and their order.

Goal: Facilitating the optimum project investment path for the enterprise.

Requirements Planning and Management

The next KA deals with resources and tasks for planning and managing requirements activities throughout the “requirements process.” It identifies a myriad of activities and deliverables, and we advise you not to try and memorize them all. Instead, organize the tasks into logical groups, such as Team Roles, Risk Approach, Manage Requirements Scope, etc. The chapter also covers planning for how changes are controlled and managed, and begins the process of prioritizing requirements.

Goal: Organize the requirements effort, including resources, monitoring, project coordination, and changes.

Tip: Study the most on Enterprise Analysis and Requirements Planning and Management, because they comprise the highest proportion of exam questions, according to the IIBA.

By now you may be ready for another exam question!

3) The BABOK defines a Requirement as:
A) A condition or capability of a product or solution that documents a problem or objective of the business.
B) A need or necessary feature of a system that could be sensed from a position anywhere within the system.

Requirements Elicitation

Requirements must be elicited from stakeholders in order to be analyzed and documented. This KA covers the process, tasks, and techniques for doing just that. There are ten techniques to be familiar with, such as brainstorming, interviewing, requirements workshops, etc. Make sure you know all ten of the techniques, including the strengths and weaknesses of each and how to perform them. Prioritize your time by concentrating on the most important techniques like interviewing.

Goal: Use appropriate techniques to elicit complete and accurate requirements.

Requirements Analysis and Documentation

Considered by many to be the “core” of what a BA does, Requirements Analysis and Documentation deals with how stakeholder needs are analyzed, structured, and documented. The understanding is that the ultimate goal of business analysis is for later use in designing and implementing a solution.

To represent commonly accepted practices, this BABOK KA covers 20+ analysis and documentation techniques. While you may not have used every one, you are expected to be able to answer questions about them. There is an emphasis on modeling techniques, so make sure you know them, like data modeling, use case modeling, etc. Learning about new techniques is one of the many ways that the CBAP certification process helps us improve as BAs.

Goal: Have a clear enough understanding of the requirements to enable building a solution to meet business needs.

Tip: When preparing for the exam, the terms used in the BABOK won’t always be the terms you’re used to on the job. Make sure you know and memorize the BABOK’s terms if you want to pass the exam, even if they are “wrong.”

Requirements Communication

For requirements to be valid and approved, they must be communicated. This can and should happen throughout the life cycle of eliciting, analyzing, and documenting them. The Knowledge Area on requirements communication focuses on expressing the output of requirements analysis and documentation. It covers the need for presenting requirements in formats suitable for your intended audience.

Goal: Achieve a shared understanding of and agreement to the product requirements.

Solution Assessment and Validation

Once requirements have been approved, they need to be implemented to be of value. To do this, BAs work to ensure the best solution is chosen (i.e., requirements are fulfilled by a technical design). The BABOK also mentions, but does not elaborate on the QA process, and that BAs contribute to test plans and testing process. Also covered in this KA is the role played by BAs to facilitate the implementation and help resolve any post-production issues.

Goal: Ensure the final solution meets business needs and can be implemented.

Tip: The BABOK is a long document, so make sure you leave plenty of time to read, study, and memorize key parts of it. Get plenty of rest before the exam; sleep will help you more than cramming!

Breaks are essential to learning and memorizing complex material, and to break down the important parts of the BABOK.

To give you a break right now, it’s time for another question:

4) When developing alternative solutions, how do BAs record the process of flowing from requirements to design:
A) Map the Requirements to the Design.
B) Determine Number of Design Phases.
C) Map Requirements to Design Phases.
D) Update Requirements Traceability Matrix.

Underlying Fundamentals

The knowledge and skills described in the BABOK don’t happen on their own. BAs need many other underlying skills in order to perform the tasks identified in the BOK. There is no explanatory information to study, so you must rely on general knowledge of business, communication, management, leadership, and problem solving.

Goal: Improve effectiveness in doing our jobs.

In summary, the authors believe that CBAP certification will be the next “in demand” certification for people doing project-related work. This will be primarily Business Analysts, but Project Managers, Systems Analysts, QA Analysts, and even Application Developers will want to explore the CBAP. The future of business and technical careers will belong to people who are adept at communicating, analyzing, solving business problems, and producing enduring results. Those who “earn” the CBAP designation will also be the ones to “earn” more financially, as well.

Tips: To prepare for the CBAP exam, here are some final thoughts to help you pass it:

Read the BABOK completely
Take a prep class to help focus on key areas
Join a study group to concentrate on one KA at a time
Take practice exams
If time, re-read portions of the BABOK you had trouble with in practice exams

Here are the answers to the sample exam questions: 1 b), 2 c), 3 a), 4 d)

IIBA, CBAP, and BABOK are registered trademarks of the International Institute of Business Analysis.

Elizabeth Larson, CBAP, PMP and Richard Larson, CBAP, PMP are Principals, Watermark Learning, Inc. Watermark Learning helps improve project success with outstanding project management and business analysis training and mentoring. We foster results through our unique blend of industry best practices, a practical approach, and an engaging delivery. We convey retainable real-world skills, to motivate and enhance staff performance, adding up to enduring results. With our academic partner, Auburn University, Watermark Learning provides Masters Certificate Programs to help organizations be more productive, and assist individuals in their professional growth. Watermark is a PMI Global Registered Education Provider, and an IIBA Endorsed Education Provider. Our CBAP Certification Preparation class has helped several people already pass the CBAP exam. For more information, contact us at 800-646-9362, or visit us at www.WatermarkLearning.com.